The basic idea is for the despawn timer for items to be disabled within your own ship. If you leave, it'll still disappear, but while you are present on the ship, your items will stay. This way, if you're reorganizing and happen to accidentally break a chest full of goodies, you won't lose it all while you work on remodeling or moving things around. I just recently broke my precious chest of ores and bars, and didn't manage to save any because they despawned before I could finish working on what I had been doing. So, I just lost a good 30-40 hours of playing and gathering stuff within about a minute. On a side note, another alternative would be to lengthen the despawn time.
